Moab in the Manure

While the Lord is setting out a grand feast on the mountaintop, Moab is down below, trampled in the offal of the sacrifices (Isaiah 25:10). It’s fitting that Moab is left wallowing in the madmenah , since there is a Moabite town known as Madmen (Jeremiah 48:2).

The simile reminds me of the race scene in the Iliad where little Ajax slips in the shit of a sacrificial bull while Odysseus whips past him to the finish line. Moab is little Ajax. He not only is straw – refuse and detritus – but he is straw in the manure. And, as Isaiah goes on to say, when he tries to swim his way out, Yahweh makes sure he stays there (25:11). He tries to swim through the muck, tries his hand at an exodus through the waters of humiliation, but Yahweh keeps him down. “Law low his pride” is an understatement.

God lays His enemies like dung on the ground (Psalm 83). Their bodies are food for the birds and beasts, fertilizer for the earth, the refuse of humanity.